Legal Alert: Indiana Requires Additional Signature on Recorded Documents
Effective July 1, 2020, any document to be recorded in Indiana must now have both a notary’s acknowledgment of the signature of the grantor and a notarized signature of a witness. Previously, a grantor’s signature on a document to be recorded in Indiana could either contain an acknowledgment, typically by a notary, or a proof of the grantor’s signature, typically by a witness. However, in a recent change to the Indiana Code, the word “or” was changed to “and” and the result is that recorded documents must now contain both an acknowledgment of the grantors signature and a proof by a witness. Most recorded documents typically anticipate that the grantor’s signature will be acknowledged by a notary public, but now recorded documents must also contain a notarized signature of a witness. This is an additional requirement that may be unexpected. Failure to include the additional witness signature may cause the document to be rejected by a county recorder’s office. There is a chance that if the document is a deed, mortgage, lease or memorandum of lease and it is accepted for recording by the county recorder, even without the additional notarized witness signature, the document may still be considered a validly recorded instrument under Indiana’s technical deficiency statute. However, this exception is uncertain and there is always a danger of attack if the document does not comply with the requirements of the recording statute. More troublesome is the fact that documents such as powers of attorney, land contracts, transfer on death deeds, and non-mortgage liens are not covered under Indiana’s technical deficiency statute, leaving open the question of whether or not these documents would be considered validly recorded without the additional notarized witness signature. For the time being, prudence dictates making sure that all documents that may be recorded in Indiana contain both a notarized signature of the grantor and a notarized witness signature.